This invention relates to rotary gas turbines and more particularly to rotary gas turbines having an output shaft to be connected to a rotatable load.
Rotary gas turbines of the axial-flow type have been widely used in such applications as stationary power plants, ships and aircraft. The advantages of such turbines include their relatively high power to weight ratio and their ability to be designed to meet the characteristics of the load to which they are to be coupled (e.g., high or low speed loads and high or low torque loads). A problem with the axial-flow turbine has been its relatively low operating efficiency. Early axial flow turbines were so inefficient that they produced barely enough power to drive their associated air compressor. Modern turbines having precision machined multi stage rotors have improved operating efficiency, but significant energy losses still occur particularly at the stators between the stages of the rotor. Moreover, the cost of manufacturing and maintaining such precision machined turbines is relatively high.